The present invention relates to electronics assemblies, and is primarily concerned with racked assemblies. Many such assemblies will be located in racks for housing in for example nineteen inch cabinets, or other size cabinets such as twenty three inch or metric cabinets. The assemblies may for instance be employed as servers for a number of systems, for example in local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs), telecommunications systems or other operations such as database management or as internet servers.
Such an assembly will typically comprise a supporting chassis that houses a motherboard or backplane and a number of daughterboards or module cards that extend in planes generally perpendicular to the plane of the motherboard. Because of the amount of heat that is generated during operation of the equipment and the thermal sensitivity of the equipment, it is necessary to provide cooling fans in order to direct a current of air through the assembly or otherwise permanent damage would occur.
Typically air blown through the assembly needs to be filtered to remove dust and other contaminants. Replacement of air filters generally leads to downtime of the system, the length of which should be minimized.
According to one aspect of the invention, an air filter in the form of a cartridge comprises a frame and filter material supported by the frame. The cartridge is retained in position on a surface of the panel by one or more retaining elements that can be operated to release the cartridge from the panel. This configuration allows quick replacement of the air filter while the assembly is in operation.
According to another aspect, of the present invention there is provided an electronics assembly which comprises:
(i) a chassis; and
(ii) a panel that is mounted on the chassis;
wherein the panel has, on a surface thereof, a generally planar air filter in the form of a cartridge having a frame and filter material supported by the frame, the cartridge being retained in position on the panel by means of one or more retaining elements that can be manually opened to allow release of the cartridge from the panel.
The invention has the advantage that it is possible to change the air filter relatively quickly by virtue of the design of the assembly, and even to replace the air filter or filters while the assembly is in operation.
Thus, according to yet another aspect, the invention provides a method of replacing an air filter in an electronics assembly comprising
(i) a chassis; and
(ii) a panel that is mounted on the chassis;
wherein the method comprises releasing the or each retaining element, removing the air filter, locating a replacement air filter on the panel and engaging the or each retaining element; the operations being performed while the electronics assembly is in operation.
The panel may be located on the front surface of the chassis in view of the fact that this surface has the array of air filters, and so the panel may also be required to have aesthetic qualities. In this case, the air filter may be located on an inner surface of the panel, that is to say, the surface that positioned against the chassis. The panel will therefore need to be moved in order to allow access to the air filter, and so the panel may be mounted on the chassis by means of one or more hinges, for example so that it can be swung out from the chassis. Alternative methods of fixing the panel to the chassis may be employed in which the panel can be lifted or slid off the chassis.
According to another aspect, the invention provides a chassis for an electronics assembly which has a panel mounted on a surface thereof. The panel has, on a surface thereof, a generally planar air filter in the form of a cartridge having a frame and filter material supported by the frame, the cartridge being retained in position on the panel by means of one or more retaining elements that can be manually opened to allow release of the cartridge from the panel.
According to yet a further aspect, the invention provides a panel for an electronics assembly, which panel has, on a surface thereof, a generally planar air filter in the form of a cartridge having a frame and filter material supported by the frame, the cartridge being retained in position on the panel by means of one or more retaining elements that can be manually opened to allow release of the cartridge from the panel.